If you walk down the worn stone steps that lead to my basement, you will come to a heavy door, and beyond it a cramped and rather spooky room. It measures barely 2m in width and is only a metre or so deep, but it has three good shelves and a couple of fearsome hooks hanging from the ceiling. I never thought much of it at first, but it has started to intrigue me. Right now it is home to candles, enough tester pots of paint to stretch from London to Edinburgh (and every single one of them a shade of white) and the three-legged stand that held up the Christmas tree, but at one time it must have been a fair-sized larder.

I long to return the little room to its original use, with jars of home-made marmalade and bags of coffee beans on its wide stone shelves, and with a salami and a string of onions hanging from its ceiling hooks. Sadly, there are more pressing matters in this house than plugging up the holes in its ceiling, insulating the walls to keep out the heat from the boiler cupboard next door, and finding someone brave enough to move the (thankfully empty) mousetrap.

I covet my friends' cool, orderly larders. Though I would love to know why they need quite so many jars of different mustards. What I wouldn't give to open that heavy door and find a salame Milano or di Napoli or perhaps the one with fennel and black pepper known as finocchiona suspended from the ceiling. There would be jars of olives, too, and presumably some bottles of wine. That way I would have everything I need to stave off the hunger that eats me up while I am cooking the dinner.

A kitchen seems a bit naked without a salami in the fridge. Just the way it does when you forget to get lemons. Nothing else seems quite right to nibble as you make the evening meal and toss the salad. Unless you're the sort of person who isn't turned on by what Italian food writer Anna Del Conte calls 'minced or chopped pork, flavoured with spices and herbs, well seasoned and pushed into natural or artificial casing and aged'. A slice or three is enough with some tiny purple olives and a glass of red. Few things are quite so toothsome and savoury, with such chewy flesh and pearls of white fat.

Cured meats of any kind give a depth of flavour to any slow-cooked casserole- type recipe. I sometimes chop a salami into cubes and cook it off with the finely chopped onion, garlic and parsley with which to start a braise. A sound way to add savour to a pasta sauce is to add chopped salami to the garlic and tomato base, as you might add pancetta or cubes of bacon.

Some of the cheaper salumi - especially the softer, less aged ones you find in supermarkets - can be added, cut into thick matchsticks, to pork, pigeon or rabbit casseroles. They are richly aromatic but surprisingly unfatty. Best use yet was the time I added some short strips of a dried sausage that I didn't particularly like to a lentil and fresh sausage hotpot. Big winter flavours there.

I have yet to try the recipe for roast loin of venison wrapped in thin slices of coppa that I found the other day. It sounds good, and deeply robust, whereas another recipe, this time softer and more gentle, cooks a joint of pork in milk with strips of Parma ham. What I have done, and many times too, is a version of the classic veal saltimbocca, but using anything from pork steaks to trout fillets instead of doe-eyed and jelly-legged calf. The filling is somewhat immaterial. The interesting bit is the flavour you get from wrapping the filling in slices of prosciutto, and securing it in the traditional manner with a cocktail stick and sage leaf.

And while winter is still upon us, I should remind you just how good a scrag end of a salami or Parma ham bone is in a pot of bean soup. Just drop it in as you bring the liquid up to the boil, then let it simmer until it has imparted its salty savour to your supper.

Sausages with salami and lentils

A rough-edged casserole that gives the impression of having been cooked for hours, but which is pretty much ready to eat in 45 minutes. You could put it in the oven if you prefer, in which case you should let it cook for about an hour at moderate heat. This is the sort of food I like to put on the table for Saturday lunch, with a bowl of rocket salad by the side. Then you can swoosh the salad leaves around your plate to mop up the last bits of tomatoey lentil sauce. Serves 2 with seconds.

Peel the onions and cut each one in half from tip to root, then cut each half into 4 or 5. Warm the oil in a heavy-based casserole, add the onions and let them cook over a moderate heat until tender. Meanwhile, peel the garlic, slice it thinly and add it to the onions. Stir the onions regularly.

Peel the thin skin from the salami, then cut the inside into fat matchsticks. Add this to the softening onions and leave for a couple of minutes, during which time the salami will darken slightly.

Start cooking the sausages in a nonstick pan. You want them to colour on the outside - they will do most of their cooking once they are in the sauce. Tip the crushed tomato into the onions, add the washed lentils and stir in 500ml of water. Bring to the boil. Remove the sausages from their pan and tuck them into the casserole with the bay leaves. Cover the pot with a lid and leave to simmer gently for about half an hour, until the lentils are tender.

Stir the mustard into the lentils and season with black pepper. You may find it needs little or no salt.

Turkey escalope with prosciutto and lemon

I say turkey, but you could easily do it with a chicken breast, batted out under greaseproof paper or a wrap of clingfilm so that it is barely the thickness of a few £1 coins. Turkey escalopes are rather useful, if bland, cuts of meat. The supermarkets are a better hunting ground for them than a butcher's. They are lean, which a lot of people like, and benefit hugely from being cooked with a wrapping of Parma ham. This is a rip-off, and not a bad one, of the traditional Italian dish of veal saltimbocca. Serves 3.

Bat out the steaks, with your fist or a cutlet bat, to a thickness of about 5mm. Season them with black pepper and place a slice of prosciutto on each, folding it over to fit. Put a slice of lemon on each escalope, then secure the lemon and ham on to the escalope with a cocktail stick. Dust with a little flour on both sides.

Heat the oil and butter in a shallow pan over a high flame. Place the escalopes in the oil and fry for about 2 minutes on each side. When they are golden brown, remove the escalopes to a warm plate, tip off the oil and pour in the white wine and Marsala. Allow it to bubble for a minute or so, then spoon over the turkey. Serve the lemon wedges for squeezing over at the table.